Left I on the News

A leftwing view of the day's news and the way it's presented in the media

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

A picture is worth a thousand words

[Updated; see below]

From the Times (U.K.) (hat tip Lenin's Tomb), who learned that Hamas had spent months slicing through the heavy metal wall using oxy-acetylene cutting torches before setting off explosive charges last night in 17 different locations to bring down the 40ft wall, allowing 350,000 Gazans into Egypt and breaking the blockade.

Now that's what you call "direct action"!

Update: Thursday morning, on the local KTVU news show "Mornings on Two," host Ross McGowan was interviewing former Secretary of State (and current Clinton adviser) Madeleine Albright about her latest book, and asked her about Bush's "peace plan." Her answer: she was very concerned because of the destruction of the wall and the flooding of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians into Egypt, and she didn't know what the consequences of that would be. Israel keeping 1.5 million Gazans in the world's largest open-air prison, and then inflicting further collective punishment by trying to starve them to death (and worse, cutting off electricity and medicine resulting in the death of many critically ill people)? Not her concern. The world's largest jailbreak, made by people whose major concern was buying food and medicine? Major worry to Ms. Albright.